Over the years there have been a number of attempts to add various types of retainers to fish hooks in order to improve the use of soft bait for fishing. Usually with the use of soft bait, such as dough balls and marshmallows, the bait is inserted over the barb of the hook and pushed back along the curved and/or shank portion of the hook. Without some kind of retainer the bait usually breaks apart and is lost even before the hook hits the water.
The same type of problem has occurred with live bait, such as worms, salmon eggs and crayfish tails. Although these types of bait do not disintegrate and fall apart as readily as other soft bait, it has been difficult to retain this type of bait on the fish hook for any length of time. In fact, in many cases the bait is lost without the fisherman knowing it and thus, the bare hook remains in the water without any success.
Most of the bait retainers, up to the present, have included some type of wire structure usually in helical form which is either crimped or permanently attached to the fish hook. In many cases the wire retainer is secured to the shank of the hook. The bait is then intertwined along the convolutes of the wire structure or the soft bait is mashed around the retainer to provide a gripping arrangement for holding the bait to the shank of the fish hook. All of these arrangements have proven to have deficiencies in that the bait is broken up or separated because it is pushed through or into the convolutes of the retainer. This mashing or squeezing procedure has a tendency to negate or detract from the intended purpose of the fish hook retainer. In addition, the bait is not properly positioned with respect to the barbed end of the hook.
The present invention is a substantial improvement over the existing retainers in that the bait is not mashed or squeezed into the retainer, but the retainer is easily positioned within the bait, with the bait in turn being properly supported and positioned over or near the barbed end for disguising the hook for successful fishing.